Quit Taking Things So Personally. The Quality Of Your Life Depends On It.

Hey, Why Are YOU so Upset?

Life isn’t all rainbows and unicorns, excellence and success, it can be a downright messy, complicated and challenging endeavor. Everyone has the right to be themselves, people have judgments, opinions and the right to lead their life by their own rules. And so do you. So if you are suffering a lot of unnecessary stress and drama, you are probably taking things personally thinking that what everyone does and says is about you. You are then becoming a victim of someone else opinions, actions, and judgments. Does this sound like you?

Why is it so very easy to cultivate and obsess to the point of frustration and insecurity about someone else’s opinions, especially when you think they are completely and utterly about YOU. Do they really have a problem with you? Or is your mind insidiously playing tricks on you that you have developed an unhealthy perception of yourself that you care far too much and have assigned intent and meaning to what someone else thinks about you?

I know this all too well, I have spent nights frantically tormenting myself over a nasty comment, a threatening email, a social media troll who wants to shut you up or what your co-worker said about you behind your back? I know that you have probably suffered the same fate right? Everyone has the right to voice their opinions and their personal attacks but you have the right to agree with them or not, that is your right, your decision to make.

Taking things personally has become a full-blown epidemic. From social media to our workplaces, business alliances, friendships, relationships, gyms, groups and everywhere we turn, you, me and everyone is taking everything so personally and it is preventing us from seeing where our true greatness lies and preventing us from being happy and living a fulfilled and confident life.

Another person’s judgments are about THEM and not YOU. If you believe something that comes out of someone else’s mouth, you are probably taking it personally. What THEY said and/or did is because of THEM, not YOU. You and I experience the world through our own perceptions and our own experience. Everyone has their own unique story about you that is filtered through their belief system. I have an experience about you of you and you have an experience of me about me. It can be a little confusing and convoluted at times now can’t it?

You aren’t in charge of the words that come out of another person’s mouth or the ill intention created by someone else. But you are responsible for how you react. YOU are the only one who can dictate how you think, how you act and how you feel. Yes, YOU. You can defend your limitations or get upset, but deep down, they only reason you would probably do that even is if you believe there is a semblance of truth to it.

Nothing Has Meaning Unless You Assign Meaning To It.

Other people’s problems and habitual patterns are not about you. This one thing can change your life completely if you allow it to . People act in accordance with what they believe and their behavior is motivated by their own insecurities or fears about themselves. This is a hugely important principle of human behavior, even if their deepest desire is to hurt you in some way, that would be about them and not you. You have the power and choice to decide NOT to take it on and make up a story that what they did is because of you. Easier said than done right?

The past does not have to control you, it can strengthen you if you choose to shift your perception about it. Why not give your past a different meaning? If your past once cause you a lot of pain, stress, and suffering, because you have assigned meaning in that way, through learning new information and having new and novel experiences, you CAN transform how you experience these situations. Marianne Williamson said that “a miracle is a shift in perception from fear to love.” You can literally re-write your whole life and tell a completely different story if you dig deep and assign a different, more evolved growth mindset to it.

The BEST part is, you NEVER have to take on someone else’s poison or toxicity. Can you believe it? Unless you decide to take it on or get seduced by it, you are immune to it. If you choose to believe it as truth, they you are going to cause yourself, a lot of grief, stress, and unnecessary suffering. Do you really need any more reasons to suffer and be stressed out?

Confident and emotionally competent people don’t let what other people say about them define a vision of themselves. They know that it is a waste of time and of energy and they move on. They don’t even think about or talk about it because their vision of themselves is greater than any outside circumstance. They have learned to grow thick skin and so can you. No one can diminish you without your permission. Now, that’s the truth.

If you feel offended or resentful at all, then there is some work to be done on yourself. Confident people don’t defend, people who are immune to the poison of others, don’t react, they move on and override the toxins of others, they learn to become more bulletproof and in doing so, they become more confident. When you accept reality for what it is and don’t resist it or assign some sort of subjective meaning to it, your life will become more peaceful and you will be happier because you deflected someone else’s opinion and judgment. If you truly own the truth of who you are and know that you are confident and believe in yourself, what other people do or say is completely not pertinent and irrelevant.

Not Everyone is Going To Like you, So Get Over It.

As I have matured and taught people how to become more self-confident, I have come to a simple conclusion. Guess what? Not everyone is going to like you! And not everyone is going to like me either. BOOM! Now, that’s something we can all agree upon now isn’t it?

Here’s the truth, in our brutal attempts to please and appease everyone else, we lose a little part of our selves and that leaves us vulnerable to everyone else’s opinion of who we are. Or who “they” think we are. Some people won’t like the way you speak, the way you talk, your hair, your clothes, your face, how you structure your sentences, your accent, what you wear, how you present yourself and they won’t care for you or what you represent, and some people will be vocal and downright nasty about it too. SO WHAT, now what? Those people you are going to have to write off and move on from, because for every one of this people, there is one who is going to love you for you and everything that you stand for, your brand of the unique you that you are.

Here’s a little secret: you have a choice to make and you do NOT have to waste your precious time and energy on becoming their friend or having them like you. STOP IT! The less your attention is fixated on the haters do what Taylor Swift says and “shake if off.” There are the judgers, the critics, and the haters, let them do what they do, you figure out how to keep on track and stay your course, don’t let their voices derail you from what you represent and who you are and what you want to achieve. This is a sure way NOT to achieve your goals and dreams.

An insecure person may react but the self-reliant person won’t. These people realize that is just wasted energy and if they retaliate, they believe at some level there may be truth to the words or they have decided to take it personally. Is it worth it to take on someone else’s toxicity and their own expectations of you or whom they think you should be? What an utter waste of time and energy. But we all do it don’t we? I know it is easier said than done “if you have nothing nice to say, don’t say it at all.” Ha!

People are now more connected and disconnected than every before! Ah, the dichotomy of it all! You have the privilege of choosing what type of experience you have in life and that is solely up to you. What are you going to choose? Are you really going to let people walk all over you, criticize and judge you and live your life according to THEIR standards? No way! Don’t retaliate, there is this amazing invention called the “delete” button, use it, it is there for a reason. Delete the people you know are the negative nancys, eliminate the critics and judgers, and find the ones that lift you up, support your dreams and value you for who you are.

It runs deep in who we think we are. It makes us question and reveals our wounds at the deepest levels of our minds and we start to feel insecure and unworthy. From being too ugly or too fat, or not good enough and not smart enough, to not having the time to make our selves our priority to a myriad of a million other things that we excuse ourselves from achieving because we let someone else’s limits perception get in the way of our self-efficacy and self-worth. Your self-worth is not dependent on the value of what someone else thinks of you.

It Is All About Awareness.

But as we become more aware and self-actualized, there is a realization that people’s judgments are about them and not you. If you take on another person’s poison and try and hurt them back, then that makes you like them! Do you want to be like them? If you are busy judging them, because they judged you, then you are attempting to solve the problem at the same level it was created. Instead, you must elevate your thinking and your level of mind. Let your confidence speak the loudest about who you really are. Be confident, have some self-respect, and either walk away, don’t respond and move right along. There will always be people who attempt to drag you down and diminish you but that is just life. Your job is to filter those people out, dig deep, grow some thick skin and continue on your upward trajectory.

When you have an unshakeable sense of self, and when you are impervious to the opinion of others, you are self-confident. When you make everything about what’s going on about you, you are taking it personally. Did you realize that everything is NOT about you? Can you even stand it? If you are finding reasons to take something personally or being offended, you will always suffer disappointment and assign intent. Happy, confident people do not assign intent to the actions of others.

In life one thing is for sure; someone won’t call you back when they said they would, someone may stand you up, someone will probably forget your birthday, someone will more than likely cut you off on the freeway, screw you over in business, lie to you, deceive you, cheat on your, jump the queue in front of you at the supermarket, yell at you, threaten you, write a nasty comment on your social media wall, and you know what, GET OVER IT. The important part here is; do you have enough emotional and spiritually maturity to NOT let it affect you and drag you down? how are YOU going to react to it, that is YOUR business. Don’t let another person diminish you or steal your worth away.

I encourage you to take inventory of your taking it personally habitual patterns. When you drop your addiction to taking it personally, your life will inevitably become more stress-free. Get ready, because when it happens, your ego may want to revert back to the OLD self. It is up to you not to let that happen. Break your addiction once and for all. I know this trait very well, taking it personally and I have been the best of friends and I had been a victim of it for so long! Gradually, time and commitment lead me to stop this self-sabotaging behaviour and I have never looked back. Love yourself enough to do it.

Confident people don’t take what others do personally; they know and innately understand that what others do is because of them, not you. Don Miguel Ruiz wrote in The Four Agreements that if you never take anything personally, you become immune to needless suffering. Confident people don’t take things personally, they hold the core belief that their life is one hundred percent in their control and they take one hundred percent responsibility for it.

When people show you who they are, believe them, trust your intuition, choose wisely who you spend time with, choose your friends, your business acquaintances, and your coworkers, even your family, (because we know family can be toxic and dysfunctional too). Your time is a precious commodity, protect it because you won’t get any of it back!

What they choose and do is a direct reflection of themselves and their values, what YOU choose is a direct reflection of you and your values, beliefs and perceptions. What you do, what you say and how you represent yourself is yours to choose, what is your brand of YOU going to represent? Integrity, loyalty, compassion, commitment, kindness, doing the right thing? You get one chance at this journey called “life,” make it memorable, and make it remarkable.

Get Out of Your Own Way.

Stop figuring out a way to please everyone and apologize relentlessly over your brand and your own uniqueness. You don’t have to defend it or acknowledge it. You are wasting precious attention and your precious time that you need to focus on your own life. How many countless hours of sleep lost, the time spent obsessing fanatically about what “they” did or “said.” The hours of self-inflicted suffering because you didn’t choose to move on and NOT take it personally. I know I know, its hard but cry me a river, life isn’t always unicorns and fairies, sometimes it can be darn right rotten and difficult but that is the way it is. Life isn’t always fair but you chose to play the game of life, so play it to win, be confident, be unique, be the sensational you. Everyone else is taken anyways! 🙂

Nobody has power of you, but you. Don’t let those inner insecurities or demons trick you into believing that anyone else does. Because that is a load of BS. The battle we face here in our minds and in our lives is that these people try and make you think they have power of you. They don’t that is an illusion of the mind, don’t believe them. When you pay less attention to them and more attention to you, amazing things unfold and happen so beware, the more you practice not taking it personally, the more amazing your life will become, you clear that headspace for creation and evolution, so watch out, magic is going to unfold when you let this part of you go….

You don’t see life through the eyes of others and they certainly don’t see life through your eyes. But I do know this for sure; taking shit personally is stressful, it’s a distraction, it’s incredibly frustrating and it’s a serious dream killer and time waster. Dig deep into that amazing mind of yours and see yourself for what you really are, an AMAZING, ONE-OF-A-KIND PERSON.

Don’t let these insidious things distract you from the amazing things you are experiencing and have yet to experience. You are cheating yourself out of your self-worth and cheating yourself out of really experiencing your life when you take things personally. If you are doing that, STOP IT. You deserve better than that and you are worth spending that precious time on yourself.

Our life is so much more enriching when we can just let it go, brush it off and move on. Here’s the truth, unless you are inside that person’s head, you don’t have a clue what they are all about and they don’t have a clue what we are about. Self-assured people focus on what they want, make the necessary decisions to get what they want and their confidence outweighs any other decision in your life.

Life is about progress, not perfection, you aren’t going to be perfect when you learn a new skill but keep going, it does get easier to brush the difficult times off and move beyond your preconceived notions that you are striving for perfection, because you aren’t. You will knee jerk and react from time to time, we are human and we are connected to other humans, if you do react, how long are you going to react for? Now, this is up to you! If yo have the habit or pattern of belief where you take things personally, you may not change overnight, you may need to practice a little, but you know what, if you want it badly enough, you will make it happen!

Everything in life that is worth it, takes some time, takes some effort and takes commitment, but what is your peace of mind worth to you, you have to start somewhere now don’t you? Patterns can run deep, but your willingness and moxie will become your best friend if you make the decision to “just do it.”

“Be what you want to be and not what others want to see.” Don’t run from who you truly are. Embrace it, that’s where the magic is.